It was a fierce tackle-hug that pulled out of my vengeful thoughts.
Before I knew it, Mia had her arms around in earnest, rather than just lounging on top of .
"Mia?" I asked in surprise. "Is everything okay?"
The look on her face implied I was an idiot. "I'm fine. You're not."
Naturally, I reached for the tried and true approach: deflect, deflect, and deflect so more.
"I'm not the one being a cuddle bug," I said teasingly, but I did shift enough so I could awkwardly wrap one of my arms around her, even if it did cramp one of my wings sothing fierce. "Really, what's wrong?"
"You forget what I'm a demoness of, Hayden Hall. Your emotions were not exactly subtle."
I froze, rembering all my recent visions of raining violent punishnt down on lchom's head.
"Ah."
She huffed in a distinctly feline way and burrowed her face deeper into my side. "Study up on your family later. You don't have to rush things. We have ti."
"Do we, though? I've dropped my magical education, hard. Your stealth was so useful with those locals, but ? What can I do past cleaning up the blood once battle's over?"
"You can do plenty. You taught spells I still use. Helped adapt them. It's ti to shut up and cuddle now."
Her words sure sounded final, and even drew a chuckle out of . I hesitated for another second. But then my hand fell on top of her head, and I gently ran my fingers through her hair.
It was silky smooth and ridiculously flawless. I hadn't dared do it before, but when my fingers brushed against her ears, I took the ti to toy with them. They were remarkably identical to regular cat ears. Just far more velvety.
Mia chose to bear the indignity with a few quiet grumbles and what sounded suspiciously like a disgruntled ow, but she didn't claw up, so I could call it an overall success.
And sohow, as I stroked her hair, the story ca pouring out of .
"I co from a family of mages, as you might know. Two main lines: summoners and crystal elentalists. Apparently, we were a pretty big deal back on the world we originated from. Had a whole kingdom to ourselves and everything. The world was fairly advanced too, from what I could tell. In spite of all that, the patriarch of my family chose to betray everyone and willingly summoned a demonic invasion. They even made him the head of a division for it. Well, I don't think he climbed up the ranks solely because of that, since the promotion is recent. Even so…"
"You still hate him for what he did."
"Yep." I shook my head, marveling at the tide of rage still coursing underneath every thought. "I can't explain it. I felt plenty of anger before, of course. But now? Now that I got to see what Ao was like? What my family was like? I'm half tempted to go back to Tornt and try to claw his throat out. I'd fail, obviously. He'd probably vaporize on the spot if I sohow made it to him in the first place. But —"
"I understand," she whispered.
The despair in her voice crushed my heart a little. It didn't take long to connect all that resentnt with her reaction to Vallinach.
"You know what's funny?" I went on, partly to distract her from the pain roiling off her in waves. "I got to find out who led the invasion of my world. It was Crewe. Crazy coincidence, right? The one high-ranking demon who actually helped us was also the one who destroyed my world. I have no idea how to feel about that."
She pulled herself up then, displacing my hand that had been playing with her ear so she could look right in the eye. "You know exactly how you feel about that."
My lips twitched. I looked away from her. "Maybe."
"Glaustro isn't going to hate you for resenting Crewe."
I winced, but I refused to chance another look into her eyes. "No? Even though his brother works for the man, and he helped us on Lagyel?"
Mia shrugged, shifted, and plopped herself down on top of . Her chin was on my chest, letting her maintain forcibly direct eye contact.
"Glaustro might have good advice for you on the subject."
"Or he might tell to suck it up and move on. I'm hardly the first person whose world was sacked, life was stolen, and then got shoved into the legion to perpetuate the cycle. Hells, I'm willingly doing that to other people here!"
"I don't think Glaustro or his brother participated in what happened."
She knocked the breath out of my lungs with that. Of course she could just cut through to what was really bothering . She knew better than anyone at that point.
That tends to happen when you spent all your ti around soone.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
"But they might have," I eventually shot back. "And… does it matter? Should it matter? What are we even doing, Mia? It's a bit late to ask myself that, but… what did we get ourselves into? What are our long-term goals? Just… survival? Or maybe we'll grow and grow and either die or reach the top of the legion! But then what?"
"I want revenge. I want vengeance," she growled.
I had never heard so much emotion in her voice. Her eyes were sparking with golden flecks. I couldn't resist the urge to brush my thumb over her cheekbone, letting said sparks fizzle against my skin.
"And what then?"
Both my gesture and my question seed to throw the cat demoness for a loop, at least briefly. She looked away for a mont before saying quietly, "I don't know, but you'll help figure it out."
That made smile. I mussed her hair as a little vengeance of my own. She yowled and tried to bite my fingers, fixing with an unimpressed glower when she failed. My smile widened into a grin.
"Only if you help figure things out, too."
"You're rude, but fine," she huffed. Then she closed her eyes and dug her chin into my chest unnecessarily hard, signaling that the conversation was over.
I took a few extra monts to try and clear my head, but it wasn't working. The image I had of Glaustro and his brother as helpful, even kind ntor figures was constantly clashing with another image: their faces, transposed on two of the demons charging into my family's ancestral city.
I grit my teeth a bit harder than was necessarily wise, certainly hard enough to chip them if I wasn't a demon, but then I deflated. I let all the anguish and anger drain out of . Pure spite wasn't going to get anywhere closer to my goal.
Instead, I turned to the wealth of books I'd inherited from my mother.
Reaching my sword and its storage jewel would have been tricky if I couldn't just summon it to my hand. Thankfully, I could, so I didn't have to fight off a kitty puddle.
The first book I extracted was on runes, specifically demonic runes.
My first encounter with those was when I absorbed the beginner-level enchanting knowledge of so random poor soul on Berlis. Unfortunately, said soul did not belong to an accomplished mage, nor did its mories co from a magically advanced civilization. After all, Berlis was viewed as barely fit to test fresh recruits in.
The rest of my runic knowledge ca from the scattered spellwork and research I had gathered over my training, and it was mostly practical in nature. I could recognize and draw a bunch of runes, and I could use them to ss with spell composition and casting. But that all stemd from the reflexive understanding obtained through casting repetition.
It wasn't like 'reading runes' was all that great an accomplishnt. Runes as a whole contain an innate magic that basically broadcasts their essence out to the world, since they were created by observing and jotting down natural magical laws in written form.
I knew that before, in so vague peripheral way. But it was only when I lived through Tridsten's lessons secondhand that the knowledge really clicked. One of her tutors guided them through the process of discovering, recording, and then refining runes, which is how I learned that runes are pretty much universal.
This was honestly a relief.
Every rune is rooted in the most basic principles of not the local world, but the universe itself. The only reason everyone doesn't use the exact sa runes, no matter their world of origin, is because the local reality does slightly alter the runes' natural shapes. Yet that doesn't impact their universality. You could take twenty different runes for 'air' from twenty different worlds, and they'd all be pretty similar. They wouldn't be identical, but they would work on every single one of those worlds.
Theoretically, runes would stop being able to perform their intended function only if you sohow wound up in a different universe entirely. But since not even the Abyss had ever co across a world that wasn't within our sphere of reality, that concern was pointless.
So if runes are interchangeable, why would I bother reading up on Abyssal runes at all?
Refinent, that's why.
The older and more thorough a civilization's research into runes, the more they are pared down, simplified, and reduced to the most optimal shape and form. This process is a grueling one. It often requires traveling to different worlds, stealing their runic research, and then comparing notes.
After all, it's hard to cut bits off of runes randomly to discover this optimal form. But if you already had the aforentioned twenty unique runes for 'air'? You'd just have to identify the identical bits, then discard the rest.
Through this process, runes could beco more 'foundational.' They would resonate better with the core of reality, and, therefore, they could pull more power from it.
Needless to say, the Abyss had so of the most polished runes out of all the worlds out there.
The book on runes was a fascinating read. I even tested out a couple of my spells after painstakingly replacing their runes with the optimal versions. The difference was amazing! Both the ease of spellcasting and the spell's effects grew trendously.
This line of research inevitably led to another branch of magic, of course: enchanting. I had been fascinated by it from the start, and my mother must have shared at least part of that emotion. A decent portion of her library centered on the subject.
Unfortunately, I doubted I could make swift progress on that front.
I couldn't really appreciate it properly when I watched Yules work on our armor, mostly because she was doing a thousand different things I wasn't equipped to follow or understand at the ti, but enchanting is trendously complex.
For it to work, runes have to be worked ticulously into the base material of the item you're trying to enchant, mostly in the form of mana passageways that mimic the rune's shape. That sounds simply in theory, but it's only a rune's most basic and inefficient form that cos in two dinsions. If you want to make the most of your enchantnt, you need to add several more dinsions on top of that, all while properly binding the runes to the item. As if that wasn't difficult enough, the best possible approach is to craft the channels out of unique materials, most of which have to be blended very carefully.
Enchanting wasn't just a job or a hobby. It was an art, and one that took considerable resources to master. It no longer surprised that Yules and her mother clearly ca from wealth and power. In fact, I suspected that most if not all of the premier Abyssal crafters were propped up by imnse expense accounts at the start of their careers.
I resolved myself to thank Yules more properly the next ti we t for all the amazing work she'd done for Mia and . Also, I pledged to avoid complaining about prices of quality items in the future. Considering all the work and persistence crafters had to pour into their professions, most of them deserved to be properly compensated.
Other than that potion seller I t once who chose to double his prices and chase all other competition out of town. That guy could go drown in his own uselessly overpriced stock.
With my mood sowhat settled, and my appetite for mystic knowledge whetted, it was ti for what I was really looking forward to. Maybe I had no more family left whom I'd be willing to get along with, but I still had a piece of my ancestral legacy with .
I extracted my family's crystalline grimoire with considerable reverence.
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